Foreign Perspectives

If it had gone ahead in either of the forms proposed there would have been much that would have been different in the last 50 years. The European Union would never have gotten off the ground for a start or at least it would have but in a very different form with countries joining either the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and France or the British Commonwealth depending on which option they had ran with back then. Would the Commonwealth have once again become the British Empire?

Presumably either way the British Commonwealth would have remained a source of goods rather than being pushed to the one side as sourcing for bananas and the like moved towards European countries.

Would it have made a difference to how the settlement of France by the brits has actually happened in recent times? It certainly could have started to happen much earlier as it was only possible to move easily to France after various European laws came into force but with a UK including France that movement could have started nearly 30 years earlier.

I think that the timing of things is perhaps the major difference that there would have been. The channel tunnel would have been built a lot sooner as a means of tying the new kingdom together and we might even have had the BritishFrench Airways Concorde still flying as the symbol of a much larger nation.

‘Tis a shame that it didn’t get off the ground.

Whatever way they get there, sooner or later you start to see adverts on the sites. Do they make money though?

Our own relatively low-key efforts have made us around $10 and I suspect that’s a reasonably typical income for most blogs. After all, few will get the high level of traffic that’s required to pull in the advertising income but then that’s the case for a lot of ordinary websites.

On the other hand, if the blog attracts a particular audience things can change. For instance, you’ll see a fairly small advert on the relatively high profile site Petite Anglaise for clothing which I suspect works quite well as it fits in very well with the overall theme of the blog. Others make the blog one of the main planks of their Internet promotion such as Europe A La Carte. We sometimes seem to have the market cornered on French toilets and French septic tanks, neither of which are in our main line of business but both have attracted people to the blog and have moved us significantly up the blog rankings as a result.

As personal blogs meld into business ones, there’s money to be made through mentioning your business in the blog. I don’t think you can realistically do this by “in your face” advertising and so we’ve adopted a very low-key approach through telling people what it’s like here at various times of year and via our series on buying a house in France. However, whilst both may attract people to the region, they might not stay with us.

What about the “in your face” approach though? Would that work? Actually, I suspect that it would work in that google shoots blog postings right into the top 10 within a day or two. Snag is that they don’t stay there for long. For instance, we were briefly the world expert on French septic tanks when we posted on that topic and by mentioning French septic tanks several times in this piece should be the top site once again, if only for a few days. It’s even possible to stay in the top 10 if you choose your key words properly. For instance, the top entry for google on “French military victories” has remained there for several years and indeed we still get a regular trickle of hits on our septic tank page.

Where this “in your face” approach falls down is that it’s a one-shot deal and doesn’t use the power of blogs which is to attract a regular readership.

That certainly makes it handy to see them, but it’s almost certainly not the best choice for you. Most people who look for property in France are looking for somewhere in the country so staying in a town-centre hotel won’t give you any opportunity to experience the kind of life that you are considering.

Not only that, but the hotel will almost certainly be French run whereas if you choose somewhere that’s run by someone who has made the move from the UK themselves you can ask them about it and avoid the “everything is wonderful” type of answer that you’ll get from all the estate agents. Such people will have looked at the area with “your eyes” so to speak and be able to point out pros and cons about the various parts of their region throughout the year.

If you’re considering the south of France not call in with us at Mas Camps? We live in one of the most beautiful but lesser known (hence cheaper) regions just west of Perpignan.

Before you get here, you should try to encourage your kids to enroll in French classes where they are available. If you’re near a large town or city you may be able to enroll younger children in French language playgroups and the like. One thing that you shouldn’t do is to speak French to the children yourself as this way they’ll pick up your French accent: we’ve heard many British children who’ve been here for some years still saying BON JURE rather than BO ZHUR simply because their parents spoke French to them from the start. Take particular care that playgroup leaders are native French speakers.

When they get here, if you can, you should enroll 2 to 11 year olds in a French school (more on education later) and 12 to 18 year olds in a bilingual school. I recommend bilingual so that your children can keep up their fluency in English as well as French; we’ve touched on this aspect several times in the past which are worth reading to see the kind of difficulties you can find with French language schools for older children.

Next week is our final section on languages: the local languages in France and what to do about them.

This series is available in reference form on our Living in France pages.

What is it about the French and their toilet habits? Whilst the rest of the world has moved on from pissoirs (in regular use in Paris well into the latter decades of the 20th century), France seems to have maintained their habit of peeing up against a wall.

A very common site in the countryside here is a car stopped alongside the road with a man standing peeing beside it. You might think that a coach would pull into a hotel and use the facilities as they do in other countries. France habits are different. Here, they pull into a hotel car park then the men head toward the hotel wall and the ladies squat beside the nearest hedge or parked car, totally ignoring overlooking windows or security cameras.

Of course, that’s just urine, isn’t it? Well, no, it isn’t. I’ll leave how they deal with “number 2s” along the road to your imagination but it’s certainly not in any kind of sanitary way. After all, why did you think the French invented perfume?

In the rest of the world boats have a holding tank for toilet and other waste water. French canal boats simply empty it straight out the bottom of the boat and the only reason why canal boats aren’t followed by a trail of toilet paper is that it sinks to the bottom. Bet that’s put you off paddling your feet in French canals!

Septic tanks tend to frighten the life out of brits moving to France. Quite rightly too. In the UK they are widely used in the country but there they are built well away from the house although you could quite safely drink the water coming out the other end. In France? Well, we’ve just been to a lovely park with a nice little sportsground and childrens’ playground. A rather smelly sewage plant is right inside the park! We even know of someone who built their septic tank right outside their kitchen window. I think that it’s safe to say that neither would be permitted under UK planning regulations but then who needs regulations to tell them that having a septic tank under your kitchen window isn’t a good idea?

Why can’t they clean up their act and get on like the rest of the world?